Financial Times

On Sunday the Iraq war will enter its 1,347th day, thus overtaking the US’s involvement in the second world war. The electorate expressed its disaffection with Iraq by delivering a Democratic victory in mid-term elections earlier this month, yet the conflict has barely caused a ripple in the daily life of most Americans...

“If you think of the Iraq war as a pool then it is still on the [US] surface,” said [Kurt Campbell, former national security advisor to Bill Clinton… more

President George W. Bush yesterday said he would welcome new policy ideas on Iraq as he adopted a concilatory tone following the capture of both houses of Congress by the Democrats.

Mr Bush's overture came as the Democrats sealed their election victory by securing the Virginia Senate seat they needed to clinch the narrowest of majorities in the upper house...

The win gave the Democrats far greater control over foreign policy than their control of the House of Representatives alone would have… more

Colin Powell’s recent intervention in the debate about the Bush administration’s proposal unilaterally to alter the Geneva Conventions marked a departure from the silence of the former secretary of state and ex-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Whether or not we hear more from General Powell in the years to come, we are likely to hear much more about his doctrine.

The "Powell doctrine" holds that the US should go to war only as a last resort and then… more

The Bush administration is coming under pressure to soften US policy towards Syria, amid growing domestic discontent over Iraq.

But while the administration may be forced to bring Syria into discussions over Iraq's future, a change of policy leading to a broader engagement with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, or to the promotion of Syrian-Israeli peace, is being ruled out.

The debate over Syria has been fuelled by the Iraq Study Group, which was set up by Congress to look at… more

A particularly American way of looking at the world has failed in Iraq, alongside the strategy of the Bush administration. This is a widely-shared belief in expanding American power whilst spreading "freedom."

Because this belief is deeply rooted in U.S. political culture, no alternative approach has yet emerged from this failure. Instead, we see intellectual and political bewilderment.

There are now worrying signs that a bipartisan consensus is arising from this confusion, based on the same assumptions and myths as before. This… more

The Bush administration’s ideological rhetoric concerning US policy in the Middle East has become separated from the policy itself to an extent almost reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. According to the rhetoric, the US has adopted democratisation as the core of its political strategy and made a clean break with its past strategy of propping up local dictatorships and playing one country and ethno-religious group against another.

In practice -- especially since the latest conflict in Lebanon -- US strategy… more

The most epochal event in world politics since the cold war has occurred and few people have noticed. I am not referring to the conflict in Iraq or Lebanon or the campaign against terrorism.

It is the utter and final defeat of the movement that has shaped the politics of the US and other western democracies for several decades: the libertarian counter-revolution.

Between the 1930s and 1960s, the US and other liberal democracies adopted their own versions of modern welfare state capitalism.… more

When, in 2004, the Orange "revolution" in Ukraine against a rigged presidential election seemed to put that country on the path to join the west, it was top news in the US media and the stuff of countless emotional commentaries. Many of them focused on the iniquity of Russia, which had backed the existing Ukrainian regime.

Since then, the events of 2004 have proved to be no revolution at all, in the sense of a fundamental change in the Ukrainian state.… more

Do rich nations need more poor workers? The answer is yes, according to the conventional wisdom, which finds expression in a new United Nations report on migration and development. The UN says that in developed nations 10 years from now there will be only 87 young entrants to the labour force for every 100 retirees. To forestall a labour shortage in the developed world, the report says that rich nations should turn to developing countries, which will have 342 new… more

If you are a European, there may be many things you can do or say about Russia, but one thing you cannot do is ignore it. In 100 years' time, it may be that the US will take very little interest in what Russia does. That can never be true of those who share the European continent with it.

At present, the internal problems of the European Union have led to Europe essentially tagging along behind US policy,… more